Sad, thus true: Negativity bias in judgments of truth

An effect observable across many different domains is that negative instances tend to be more influential than comparably positive ones. This phenomenon has been termed the negativity bias. In the current work, it was investigated whether this effect pertains to judgments of truth. That is, it was hypothesized that information valence and perceived validity should be associated such that more negative information is deemed more true. This claim was derived from the findings that negative instances tend to demand more attentional resources and that more elaborate processing can render messages more persuasive. In three experiments, manipulating information valence through framing - and assessing judgments of truth - the hypothesized negativity bias was corroborated. Potential explanations and implications for further research are discussed.     

The Role of Psychological Distance in the Formation of Fairness Judgments

The present study examined how communication format, specifically computer‐mediated communication vs. face‐to‐face communication, affected distributive and procedural fairness judgments. Specifically, it was expected that procedural information would have a stronger influence on fairness judgments in face‐to‐face communication than in computer‐mediated communication. This hypothesis was not, however, supported by a significant Mode of Communication × Procedure interaction. We also hypothesized that face‐to‐face communication, compared with computer‐mediated communication, would increase the impact of the distributive information on fairness judgments. As predicted, this hypothesis was supported by a significant Mode of Communication × Outcome interaction. The processes potentially mediating these differences, including psychological distance and evaluation apprehension, are discussed.     

Judgments of salary bias and test bias from statistical evidence

Academics examined correlation scatter plots and made judgments of group bias. Half of the subjects judged bias in salaries from graphs that showed salaries plotted against merit with a separate correlation ellipse for each of two groups. The others judged test bias from graphs that showed job performance vs test scores. Relative positions of the centroids for the two groups and the within-group correlation were systematically varied. Judgments of bias were not consistent with either “forward” or “reverse” regression definitions of bias. Judged bias is not a monotonic function of the group difference in salary between persons of equal merit nor is it a monotonic function of the group difference in merit between persons of equal salary. Instead, judgments in both tasks were consistent with a difference of differences model; for example, when the group difference in standard deviation units is equal on both salary and merit, judges say the situation is unbiased. The results are consistent with a one-mediator model of group equity, which assumes that both measures are imperfectly and equally correlated with the mediator.     

What's fair is fair--or is it? Value differences underlying public views about social justice

Individual differences in judgments of the fairness of various sociopolitical phenomena were examined in three surveys. Scales measuring two value dimensions thought to underlie the meaning of fairness were constructed, and survey respondents endorsing these different values were compared on their evaluation of the procedural and distributive fairness of political objects. Those endorsing the value of proportionality, hypothesized by equity theorists to underlie fairness judgments, judged equity-based public policies to be fairer than equality-based policies and judged that Ronald Reagan would be a fairer president than Walter Mondale. These people also emphasized the procedural aspects of government when judging government fairness. Respondents endorsing the value of egalitarianism, hypothesized by developmental theorists and some political philosophers to underlie fairness judgments, judged equality-based public policies to be fairer than equity-based policies and judged that Mondale would be a fairer president than Reagan. These people emphasized the distributive aspects of government when judging government fairness. Results support the naive moral philosopher image of the individual as judge of political objects (Tyler, 1984a). Political fairness judgments are ideological responses and are subject to the influence of the value structure of the judge (Tetlock, 1986).     

信息呈现顺序对公平判断形成的影响

在公平启发理论的基础上,以130名大学生为被试采用实验室实验探讨了信息呈现顺序对公平判断形成的影响。结果表明：（1）信息呈现顺序能够影响人们的公平判断——当结果适宜性信息更早获得时,结果公平对公平判断的影响要大于结果适宜性信息较晚呈现时的影响;（2）公平形式偏好对公平判断的信息效应具有调节作用,即当高偏好信息先于低偏好信息出现时,公平判断的顺序效应会得到加强;而在低偏好信息先于高偏好信息出现的情况下,公平判断的顺序效应会被减弱。     

The multi-value basis of procedural justice

Three experiments demonstrate that multiple values can account for the relation between respectful treatment and judgments of procedural fairness. The Group Value Theory of procedural justice (Lind & Tyler, 1988) asserts that respectful treatment is viewed as fair because it communicates positive information about one's standing within one's group. We propose that other values introduced in other contexts, including a desire for positive intergroup standing, and self-interest, will also mediate the relation between respect and procedural fairness. Three experiments are reported in which individuals have encounters with ingroup or outgroup members who treat them respectfully or disrespectfully. Results from these experiments support this multiple value model by showing that: (1) Each of the value judgments of intragroup standing, intergroup standing, and self-interest has positive direct effects on procedural fairness; and (2) The effect of respect on procedural fairness is mediated by each of these value judgments. Additionally, evidence is summarized that is generally supportive of a third, ancillary hypothesis: (3) The meaning of respect varies across contexts that highlight different values. These findings suggest that theorizing about procedural fairness will benefit by recognizing the multiply-determined and contextually-dependent nature of procedural fairness.     

Outcome Feedback Effects on Under- and Overconfident Judgments (General Knowledge Tasks)

Effects of outcome feedback on overconfident and underconfident judgments were investigated. It was hypothesized that outcome feedback had a twofold effect on confidence judgments, corrective and confidence increasing, the latter effect operating only when the items to be judged are related and/or nonindependent. The proposed hypothesis implies two predictions which were tested in two experiments: (1) If the items are nonindependent and related, outcome feedback will reduce bias and improve calibration of underconfident judgments; by contrast, the feedback will neither reduce bias nor improve calibration in the case of overconfident judgments. (2) If, on the other hand, the items are independent and unrelated, outcome feedback will reduce underconfidence as well as overconfidence bias and improve calibration in both cases. The obtained results provided strong support for the first prediction, while the second prediction was not supported. Although the differences between with- and without-feedback groups on the dependent variables were in the expected direction, they were nonsignificant.     

A slugfest of intuitions: contextualism and experimental design

This paper considers ways that experimental design can affect judgments about informally presented context shifting experiments. Reasons are given to think that judgments about informal context shifting experiments are affected by an exclusive reliance on binary truth value judgments and by experimenter bias. Exclusive reliance on binary truth value judgments may produce experimental artifacts by obscuring important differences of degree between the phenomena being investigated. Experimenter bias is an effect generated when, for example, experimenters disclose (even unconsciously) their own beliefs about the outcome of an experiment. Eliminating experimenter bias from context shifting experiments makes it far less obvious what the “intuitive” responses to those experiments are. After it is shown how those different kinds of bias can affect judgments about informal context shifting experiments, those experiments are revised to control for those forms of bias. The upshot of these investigations is that participants in the contextualist debate who employ informal experiments should pay just as much attention to the design of their experiments as those who employ more formal experimental techniques if they want to avoid obscuring the phenomena they aim to uncover.     

反应选项对时序知觉重复启动效应的影响

先前研究采用两项反应任务发现了时序知觉重复启动效应, 这可能是反应选项导致的虚假效应, 本研究采用三项反应任务对此进行了检验。实验1运用三项判断任务以消除缺乏中间选项所致的反应偏向, 结果发现重复启动显著影响“哪个图形先出现”和“两个图形同时出现”的时序判断; 实验2在实验1的基础上对“同时出现”反应选项进行两种指导语操作, 实验结果不仅与实验1一致, 而且“有把握时判断为同时出现”和“有无把握都判断为同时出现”之间没有显著差异, 说明被试能够识别时序加以判断, 不支持反应偏向的前提条件。因此, 时序知觉重复启动效应不是反应选项产生的反应偏向引发的虚假效应, 重复启动对“系列性”和“同时性”时序知觉都存在显著影响。     

ORGANIZATION OF INFORMATION AND THE DETECTION OF GENDER DISCRIMINATION

Abstract— This report examines several factors that influence the detection of gender discrimination in organizations We presented subjects with information about the qualifications and salaries of women and men in 10 departments of a hypothetical company The information was created so that one or the other gender was undercompensated relative to its qualifications Subjects rated the fairness of salaries and recalled the average qualifications of the women and men Ordinal inequity, which occurred when the gender with the better qualifications received a lower salary within a department, was easily detected Discrimination that did not violate ordinal equity within a department was more difficult to detect The results indicate that the way information is presented to subjects influences the processing of the information and the ease with which unfairness is perceived In addition, subjects judged the discrimination to be more unfair when women, rather than men, were disadvantaged     

Performance‐based pay is fair,particularly when I perform better: differential fairness perceptions of allocators and recipients

We examined in two experiments the impact of the roles that people enact (allocator or recipient) and performance attributions (talent or effort) on fairness perceptions of pay systems (performance‐based pay or job‐based pay). To test the relative effects of the roles that people enact, in the control conditions, participants were asked to evaluate the fairness of both allocation norms from ‘behind a veil of ignorance’ (Rawls, 1971 ). As hypothesized, the results consistently demonstrate that whereas recipients were biased in their fairness perceptions, allocators tended to be non‐biased in their fairness perceptions. The self‐interest bias among recipients was particularly strong when talent rather than effort attributions were imposed on them. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Triangulating Political Responsibility: The Motivated Formation of Responsibility Judgments

This article analyzes the process through which partisan bias arises during the formation of citizens' judgments of political responsibility. Informed by theories of motivated political reasoning, it argues that exposure to partisan cues motivates partisans to pursue directional goals, goals which bias the cognitive processing of information and, in turn, overall judgments of responsibility. It further argues that the nature of this biased processing will be such that partisans devalue information inconsistent with their partisan affect. Using a pair of experiments, I test these hypotheses by manipulating both objective evidence concerning gubernatorial responsibility for a state's fiscal imbalance and the presence of partisan cues. Findings support both sets of expectations. The results also suggest that the effects of partisan bias are greater in judgments tied to institutional actions than in those tied to institutional roles and expectations.     

Hindsight bias in insight and mathematical problem solving: Evidence of different reconstruction mechanisms for metacognitive versus situational judgments

This article presents two experiments that used insight and mathematical problems to investigate whether different factors would affect hindsight bias on metacognitive and situational judgments. In both studies, participants initially rated their likelihood of solving each problem within a certain amount of time (metacognitive judgments) and rated the importance of each component of the problem for finding the solution (situational judgments). Next, participants attempted to solve each problem. In Experiment 1, all participants were given solution feedback information, but in Experiment 2, participants were not given any solution feedback. After 1 week, participants were asked to recall their original judgments. Hindsight bias was assessed by comparing the initial with the final ratings. Insight problems and math problems showed different patterns of hindsight bias effects on the metacognitive and situational judgments. The results suggest that two competing models of hindsight effects are actually complementary explanations for judgment reconstruction on different types of judgment tasks.     

Task difficulty reduces the left visual hemispace bias for judgments of emotion in chimeric faces

A prior study (Carbary, Almerigi, & Harris, 2001) of adults' judgments of emotional chimeric faces showed that the left visual hemispace (LVH) bias normally found on a free-viewing chimeric faces test is reduced when the task is judged to be difficult. Taking into account theory and research on hemispheric differences in styles, or strategies, of information processing, we proposed that the reduction was related to a change in these strategies. Two new experiments are presented that independently manipulate task difficulty and show the same task difficulty-related effect as in our prior study. Data are also presented suggesting that the strategy most commonly adopted for difficult judgments is part-based or feature-oriented, whereas the strategy most commonly adopted for easy judgments is reliance on "first impression."     

Sadness and susceptibility to judgmental bias: the case of anchoring

In a wide range of empirical paradigms, sadness has been associated with more extensive and detail-oriented thinking than happiness, resulting in reductions in judgmental bias that arise from reliance on stereotypes and other simple decision heuristics. It was hypothesized that anchoring would constitute a significant exception to this general pattern. Recent research on anchoring indicates that an active thought process underlies the emergence of this bias. If sad people are likely to think more actively about the judgmental anchor than their neutral-mood counterparts, their subsequent judgments should be more likely to be assimilated toward this reference point. This prediction was confirmed in two experiments demonstrating that sad people are indeed more susceptible to anchoring bias than are people in a neutral mood. Moreover, this effect generalized over judgments in positive, neutral, and negative content domains.     

Judgments of origin and generation effects: comparisons between young and elderly adults

In 2 experiments, young and elderly adults were required to both read words, and generate words by completing word fragments. Subjects were then required to recognize those words that had been presented earlier; for those words that they recognized they judged whether the items had initially been presented in read or generate form. Generation effects (better memory for words that were generated as compared with words that were read) of similar magnitude were observed for both young and older adults. The older adults were consistently less accurate than the younger adults in their judgments of origin. In addition, the young adults exhibited a bias to respond "read" for these judgments. In contrast, the older adults either exhibited a neutral response bias or were biased to respond "generate." Age-related differences in the encoding or retrieval of information about cognitive operations do not provide a good account of the results. Alternative accounts are described.     

Fairness and preference

Two equity models were evaluated by fitting them to subjects' judgments of the fairness of payment distributions to “self” and “other” under hypothetical work situations. Neither the E. Walster, G. W. Walster, and E. Berscheid (Equity: Theory and Research, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1978) equity formulation nor Harris' (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1976, 12, 194–209) linear model adequately accounted for the fairness judgments regardless of whether self worked more or less than other. Subjects also were asked to indicate their most preferred payment distributions and these preferences were significantly different from the fairness judgments. Results suggested that fairness judgments were influenced by a bias in the direction of overpayment to self.     

The detection model of recognition using know and remember judgments

The signal detection model forknow andremember recognition judgments was tested in two experiments. In Experiment 1, two predictions of the model were tested: (1) that measures of memory sensitivity,A′, are equivalent in value when based on either the recognition (know or remember) criterion or on the remember criterion; and (2) that there is a positive correlation between recognition bias and the proportion of know judgments that are hits, but no correlation between recognition bias and proportion of remember hits (Donaldson, 1996). Both predictions were supported by the data. In Experiment 2, the context of test items was manipulated to make it more or less similar to learning context. The detection model requires that memory sensitivity be the same for both recognition and remember judgments, regardless of test context. Alternatively, if remember judgments reflect only the retrieval of episodic information from memory, the two measures of memory sensitivity should become more disparate in value as learning and test context are made more similar. Memory sensitivity was generally the same in value for recognition and remember criteria but different across context conditions, thus supporting the detection model. The nature of the memory continuum used in detection theory is also discussed.     

Partisan Bias and Information Discounting in Economic Judgments

Research shows that partisanship biases people's views about the economy. Yet, there is little understanding of the factors, if any, that might mitigate the influence of partisanship on these judgments or the effect of partisanship on metacognitive judgments. This study uses an experimental design to show that partisanship continues to bias economic judgments even when subjects receive direct and neutral information about specific aspects of the economy. Moreover, it extends our understanding of partisan bias by showing it has a direct effect on people's metacognitive assessments of their own attitudes—particularly the degree of uncertainty people have in their own economic judgments. However, it appears that people are aware of the conflict between their partisan‐based judgment and economic information since we observe increases in economic uncertainty when information is counter to a subject's partisan predisposition. The results provide new insight into the extent of partisan bias and the difficulty of countering partisan‐based judgments.